A SemiCallous Existance
by gudrina
Summary: Without realizing it perhaps, she had scanned each of the black haired heads there. She wasn’t looking for him, she told herself. And she was good at lying.


This was a challenge for a veela romance piece.  Hope you enjoy.  Bit of a surprise ending I hope, or maybe I'm just kidding myself. Review Review Review.  Xxoo -G

She remembered it.  Vaguely.  Like the feeling of light hitting your face through a pane of thick glass and a curtain of off-white Venetian blinds.  The way the light had been in her aunt's sunroom when she woke up on those lazy summer mornings as a child.  That feeling of vagueness, softness.  A sweet milky memory like cream on the coffee they served at the cafés her mother breakfasted at in Paris.  Dreamy perfection, pleasure; bliss.

Well, no, that was not what it had been.  No.  No, she thought as she shifted her hands to clasp together on top of the checkered plaid miniskirt she'd pulled on over torn stockings that morning.  She hadn't known they were torn.  She'd noticed the run as she boarded the bus, but it was too late then.  And it didn't matter anyhow, the way she saw it.

She only _wished_ she remembered it vaguely.  _Him_ vaguely.  Yes.  That was more to the right tune, she thought as she shut her eyes tightly and thought of him. 

Nothing about him had been slight or creamy or simple like that.  Like light.  Like the relationships her friends whispered to her about in the lavatory stalls as they skipped transfiguration to have a fag in the loos or maybe something stronger as they braided their hair or rolled up their skirts.  

She knew what teenage relationships were meant to be like.  She'd always imagined it would be just like that.  Like magazines and films and romance novels.  That he would have short blond hair and blue eyes and flashing white teeth.

Well.  His eyes had been green.

Green like the aquamarine sunsets she remembered from the bay where she'd spent her summer holidays so long ago.  That was what had first attracted her to him if you came down to it.  Those eyes.  Two green sunsets.

She crossed her legs and looked down at the black shoes with white scuffmarks from the salty winter streets.  Her mother would have rolled her eyes at those scuff marks.  At the rips in her stockings.  She could see her mother sitting, looking down at her shoes over a glass of something alcoholic, a cigarette in her hand, (both of these probably marked in red lip stick) and frowning.  Her mother was excellent at frowns.  Pitiful little turns of the corners of her lips that showed the absolute disappointment in her only daughter.  

Yes, it had been his eyes that caught her attention.  She'd shifted in her seat when she saw them, and a little tickle in her throat had caused her to swallow.  Sometimes she worried about being too much like her mother.  Her mother with her foreign cigarettes and expensive rum.  Or was it Vodka? It was both, she concluded as she tucked her feet under the bench where she wouldn't have to stare at the scuffmarks.  Her mother never stopped drinking and it didn't matter all that much what it was.  

He'd been a dream in so many ways.  She liked the idea of him being older.  The way he talked lulled her away, his words always wine dipped, candy coated, saccharine  She'd never had a relationship before, or at least not really.  She'd had kisses, fooled around, gone to dances, gone on dates.  It was all short lived.  She'd had boyfriends, but not relationships.  

Trust.  That was it.  She'd never had that before.  But something in those green eyes begged for trust.  Or, maybe, simply took it without question.  What an odd thing to say, she thought as she played with the hem of her mini skirt.  Trust is something you give to people and yet she'd never given anything to him, he'd just demanded it.  Taken it.  What an odd thing to happen.  Trust taken instead of given.  But that was the truth.

She could hear the train grumbling on the rails as it came into the station.  She reached for the black purse her mother had brought her back from Italy for Christmas one year.  A black leather apology for the boarding school, the summer holidays with her aunt, the fact that she'd spent more time with her new astronomy professor than with her own mother.

In the Library he moved in and out of the shelves, catching her eyes when he could.  Holding them, but like ice cubes they were too cold to grasp for long.  Too intense, and he had to let them go to warm himself enough to try again.

Studying, but his green eyes had kept her away from taking in much.  Her eyes moved over the words without reading them, thinking of his eyes on her robed shoulders, her blond hair.

She stood as the train rumbled into the station and her blond hair blew out from under the beret perched on her head.  The conductor didn't look her in the eye as she stepped up onto the thing.  She wished sometimes she hadn't been cursed with her mother's looks.  Her mother's, lets face it, blood.  Veela blood.  Her father had been decent.  Human. 

The boy sat down quietly beside her at the library table and leaned his head so that his lips were very close to her ear and she could feel his breath there saltily, hovering like a sword or perhaps a guillotine ready to slice.  But his word's had not been sharp, and the blade dissolved.

She turned to face him then, closing the volume she hadn't been reading, leaning one arm on the desk and almost seamlessly shifting into the charm she'd unknowingly captured from her mother.  The way her hair hit the sides of her face and fell to her shoulders, her icy blue eyes twinkling against a misty smile.

On the train she found a compartment and put the black strap of the purse over her shoulder to slide back the door.  Someone had been smoking inside and the scent was familiar.  She'd stolen the first cigarette from her mother when she was nine.  It had been a square red box left half open on a glass coffee table.  She'd sat on the white sofa looking at it for a time, picked it up, turned it over in her tiny, smooth fingers.  She'd pulled one pearly white-papered straw from the box and rolled it between her fingers.  She'd put it to her nose and smelled it the way she'd seen men smell cigars.  And then she'd found the matches next to the soap and packets of instant coffee left by the hotel and gone out onto the balcony.  The view was grand and she'd looked down onto the orange rooftops, the white plaster, the emerald palm trees.   And down, down to the periwinkle ocean sparkling far below, she wished once that she could stand on that balcony railing and dive over all the houses into the sea.  Be carried by the salty breeze and sea air.  The first puff of smoke had made her eyes water, and she'd wondered what was so appealing as she coughed and sat down on the blue tiled balcony.

In the train compartment she moved next to the window and watched the passengers on the other side of the platform.  Without realizing it perhaps, she had scanned each of the black haired heads there.  She wasn't looking for him, she told herself.  And she was good at lying.

They'd attended the Yule together.  A pair to catch eyes.  Her wild blond hair, like sunlight swirling around their faces as they danced, his fierce eyes, the gentle way she moved.  His strength.  Her grace.

The train was moving again, sliding across the rails and she felt the motion lull her into a sort of relaxation.  She could ride forever, watching the people, the platforms, the trees and tunnels streak by in a blur that reminded her of her childhood.

In the days that passed afterwards there were secret meetings between them.   Prefect bathrooms and dusty broom closets.  Illicit kisses.  Notes between bricks left for the other to find.  A hand brushing by her hip as she passed through a crowded hall, a rose left between her blue pillow and soft sheets.

She'd told him of her childhood as they lay in the sun one morning at the top of a tall tower there.  His arms were around her and he was humming a tune she hadn't heard before.  He was well known there at Hogwarts, and always busy.  Prefect duty or classes to attend.  Friends to meet.  He made time for her.

Aboard the train she wondered if she should dye her hair.  Golden brown hair she thought.  Perhaps even black.  Something dark, something forgettable.  

She met him in a dark hall one night and he took her away to a secret room behind a large tapestry where he'd lit candles and they sat in the moonlight.  

The train was passing pasture land now, and trees.  Sheep and goats, farmhouses, countryside.  Men had always been attracted to her mother.  She drew them in and they were like flies in her web.  Drawn to some light in her eyes, some sparkle in her smooth creamy skin.

She'd often felt that she could draw men in this way, and was at first terrified by it.  But with him it was different.  For once she felt drawn, and any power she might have had felt small and insignificant, locked away and unusable with his eyes so green.

Kisses on her neck and lips and ears.  Hands on her sides and stomach and hips.  In the waxy moonlight he took off the green and silver tie that had been loosely hanging at his neck.

She could feel the train slowing then, beneath her.  She yawned and stretched her legs out into the aisle.

He'd been more insistent then and she'd let him.  Robes fell beneath them, shirts, socks.  Her hair a golden curtain around them as they molded themselves together.  I am not my mother, she was thinking.

The train was shifting for a stop now, slowing.  She smoothed out the eye-catching skirt.

Her mother had died one spring, floo accident they said.  She hadn't cried.

In a candlelit room with moonlight like cream pouring into a dark cup of tea, she lay with him.  Against his moving chest, looking into his green eyes.  

As the train squeaked to a stop she tucked her hair once again beneath the beret in a time practiced twist and tuck.  Her eyes still betrayed her for what she was.  At least she could stare and the ground and feel anonymous.

But like all things.  The light that washes in through the thick glass will eventually fade.  Clouds comes, storms, afternoon rain.  And the evening.  

She reached down and rubbed at one of the white smears on her shoe as passengers poured down onto the cement platform.  

She'd slapped him when he'd said it.  As hard as she could so that a small red welt appeared at the edge of his cheekbone where the silver ring he had given her lay.  And he'd only smiled.

As she stepped off the train she took a small snapshot from her black bag and turned it over in her thin fingers.

_"Come with me." He'd said._

_"I'd die first." She'd whispered._

It was the type of portrait that was passed between muggle children in muggle high schools, things like _remember me_, and _I'll never forget you _perhaps written in pink pen.  Perhaps a phone number, an address.  But this one was blank but for three spidery letters.  She looked into the green eyes of the black haired boy there and dropped it into the metal trash bucket as she left the cement platform.  It drifted down, and catching the air it went slowly, lifted back and forth until it settled face down near a dripping coffee cup.  And as the milky liquid soaked into one corner of the thick paper the letters of ink smeared away.  And the three initials which had been printed there washed away into the milky coffee.  First the T, slowly the M and finally the spidery R to be forgotten forever.  A lost dream.  A twisted disappointment. T.M.R..

REVIEW! Please please. :) xxo. -G


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